This week, Aeropause was invited to a developer call hosted by Atlus USA to check out the new features being added to their upcoming PSP title, Persona 3 Portable.  Persona 3 Portable takes the very popular PS2 title, Persona 3, and brings it to the PSP, complete with new features and items that take full advantage of the new platform.  Continue reading to read about all the new additions in Persona 3 Portable, as well as the pre-order bonus that they talked up at the end of the presentation.

Everybody Jump, Jump

Persona 3 for the PS2 was a hugely popular game, and while it added a completely explorable world that you could walk around in, that kind of movement could be a bit tedious to perform on a portable system.  Also, a lot of players are only playing a portable title for 20-30 minutes at a time, and no one wants to spend all that time walking through dozens of screens getting from the school to downtown area.  This design philosophy brought in the jump menu.  With the new jump menu, you can just click on an exit, and jump to a particular area.  Time will pass for the travel time in the game, but no walking is required.  Want to go to Tartarus, the dungeon where you will spend a lot of time battling evil creatures, just jump from your room to get there.  Need to go to your part-time job after school – just jump.  You can even hum a little Van Halen while you do it to make you feel good.

Beyond jumping from place to place, you can now save in multiple locations beyond the desk at your living area and Tartarus.  We were able to see the game being saved at your desk in school and several other areas.  This design choice for Persona 3 Portable was again due to the short game time nature of the portable platform.  Yes, the game does support suspend and resume, but it is always nice to be able to save often in a game of this nature.

Once you are in a location, you do not have to walk around that environment either.  Instead, you can use the thumbstick to choose from interactive points in that area.  Again, the focus was on moving quickly, rather than having to spend extra time moving around an environment.

Dude Looks Like a Lady

Probably the biggest change for Persona 3 Portable is the fact that you can play as a new female protagonist.  Our demo was played as the new female character, and it opened up new dialog choices and social interactions.  The character also has a new choice to interact with in the Velvet Room in the form of Theodore, or Theo for short.  Sometimes, a lady needs a hunky male to help out with all those Persona choices.

Whether you play as a female or the original male lead in Persona 3 Portable, the key thing in the game is forming up social relationships and building your skills through these events.  Sometimes, it is something simple like studying for a test for a class, but other times, it can be choosing to hang out with one friend over another.  All of these choices lead to how your relationships progress in the game.  And the relationships are important, because the last thing you want is an unhappy friend backing you up in battle.

It’s Different, Yet Strangely Familiar

Persona 3 Portable will feature all of the enhancements that were present in the re-release of Persona 3: FES on the PS2, but will not feature the actual new chapter that was in that game, called The Answer.  We did not get a clear answer as to why The Answer chapter was not included, but I wondered if it had anything to do with space on the UMD.

Also, I did notice that there was a lack of dialog at times in the presentation.  Again, there was some focus on space for all of the dialog, but also, with the introduction of a new protagonist, they would have had to have gone back and re-recorded all that dialog to reference the new female character.  It did not kill the presentation of Persona 3 Portable, even though spoken dialog is always nice to have in a game.

Much improved from the PS2 version of Persona 3 are the load times.  Many times in Persona 3, you would find yourself waiting upwards of 30 seconds for a new area to load into memory.  In our video presentation of Persona 3 Portable, load times were almost instantaneous, and with the ability to load the game on to a memory stick, you can boost those load times even faster.    Also, a ton of new 2D art was added to the game, and all of it looked really good on the PSP screen.

The Other Stuff

We got some other random little bits of info on Persona 3 Portable at the end of our presentation.  Tartarus was relatively the same, with the exception of the new attendant mentioned before in the Velvet Room.  You will have the ability to control all of your characters in combat.  We did get word that there would be a few new Personas to find in the game, as well as the inclusion of Monad.  Characters will fatigue during the Dark Hour.  Also, there is the addition of two new difficulty modes – Beginner, which will allow new players to enjoy the game with little resistance from the enemies; for the hardcore fans there is a Maniac level to test the most seasoned Persona 3 players.  A big change in regards to equipment is that you no longer have to start up a dialog with someone to trade equipment.  It can now be performed from the interface menu.

Atlus also wanted to point out the availability of a pre-order bonus in the form of a Persona 3 Portable Junpei baseball cap.  The cap is fashioned right off of the character’s hat in the game, so you can sport yourself a nice Persona 3 themed hat, while questing your way through the game.

Aeropause would like to thank Atlus USA for inviting us to the Persona 3 Portable presentation, and we hope to have some more previews of Persona 3 Portable in the near future.